Rachel E Heberling's Transmissions Through the Ether:
An artist's blog about beloved obsolescence

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Accordion Drawings

In the studio... Now to put all this research and inspiration to the test.

First, I thought I would try the idea of assembling the original drawings accordion-style. I purchased stiff board to mount them on as sorts of joints between each one, then taped together and stood up, voila!

The only problem is that they are so darn flimsy. If you walk by, they simply keel over. I kind of like that, though, but for any sort of show, that would drive everyone nuts. And, of course, in the process I keep damaging and ruining the drawings. It's sort of interesting to have them worn, but not beyond recognition and just plain looking bad.The thing I did like was how sunlight came in from behind and made the paper sort of translucent. That was an interesting effect. If there was some way I could keep that, I would be interested. Perhaps I just need to print them all out on paper, and maybe xerox transfer them to something else. Tracing paper would be nice, but not quite stiff enough. Perhaps vellum?And if that doesn't quite do the trick, then next quarter I can experiment with film in the copy camera again.

After that process, I set upon the task of making it possible to listen to sounds out of the old telephone. I had torn apart several little earbuds, only to discover it was better to just take out the guts of the phone speaker and insert the earbuds intact. Surprisingly, with a little amplification from the horn-shape, one is able to hear quite well. All I did was plug the jack into my iPod and hang it underneath the chair, and voila, we have stories on demand. I can even put them all on shuffle on a continuous loop so that it is ongoing and completely random whichever tale happens to play when the listener picks up the receiver. I enjoy this, as I cannot decide upon any sort of order for the stories. They all coexist at once in one's memory.

So here are shots of the mini installation in my studio:

There's a strange filmic, repeating image between the two typewriters, drawings behind on the old peeling board, "The End" film still will certainly be somewhere, there are black-and-white photo scraps that I pulled out of the trash upstairs, and I plan to project my videos onto the shiny etching plate inside of the accordion box. So the next big task is research on mini projectors.